Basic conditions for transalpine transport demand

Any consideration of features and trends concerning transalpine transport has to bear in mind the significant changes that have occurred in the last years concerning the basic conditions relevant for transalpine traffic:

The agreement between EU and Switzerland on land born transport, coming into force in 2002, is responsible for significant changes on road freight transport through Switzerland. In several steps, the limits on vehicle weights had been increased and harmonised with EU standards, but the costs for road transport in Switzerland also had been raised significantly.

At the beginning of 2004, the Austrian Ecopoint System expired, the follow up system was not put into practice due to the lack of operational definitions and foreseeing a shortage of desired effects.

The enlargement of the EU on 1 May 2004 changed the condition for road transport for the New Member States. All bilateral agreements that regulated bilateral and transit traffic of those countries to and through Austria were abolished.

In Austria an electronic toll system on motorways for lorries commenced operation at the beginning of 2004. This led to an increase of costs for road transport in Austria, except for Brenner, where the costs for the total passage in Austria remained unchanged as the maximum possible toll according to EU-legislation had been reached before 2004.

The catastrophes at road tunnels had effects on road transport: on the one hand routes have been blocked for several months and years, on the other hand, as a consequence of the accidents, measures have been taken to guarantee a minimum distance between lorries at the tunnels of Fréjus, Mont-Blanc and Gotthard, but also having effects on the peak capacity of the routes.

Since the beginning of the century, the first effects of liberalisation of rail industry have been observed, as new enterprises are active especially in Alpine crossing transport.